The things that come up when you’ve been in international schools your whole life, or perhaps you’re discovering as an expat adult for the first time, are not things that someone who has lived in one place for most of their life could possibly relate to.

When someone says “Are you going home for the holidays?” it doesn’t carry the same meaning for you as it does for them. You don’t actually even know what that question means. Home is a confusing concept when you’ve moved around so much, when everyone in your family is from somewhere different, and there’s no single place where everyone gathers. Not where you were raised, not where your parents were raised, not where their parents were raised.

The concept of the TCK, or Third Culture Kid, is something many people who haven't lived this kind of life have never heard of. Essentially, your parents are from one place or culture (possibly two different ones), they have you somewhere neither of them is from, and you're raised there. That brings a third culture into the mix. It's worth noting that for the term to really apply, these need to be genuinely different cultures, think China, India and Brazil, not three different towns in the same country. Then you move, and there's a fourth culture. Then another. So while TCK stands for Third Culture Kid, I'd argue that many TCKs are actually fourth, fifth, or sixth culture kids. I had friends growing up whose mother was from one country, dad from another, they were born in a third, and had moved at least twice after that. The layers run deep.

All of this is what makes “Where are you from?” such a genuinely difficult question to answer in social settings if you’re a TCK.

As an adult expat, you might be experiencing this for the first time, coming from a more traditional background where family all live in the same place, and you’re the first person to leave. That loneliness can hit hard. You might be missing home in a very real, tangible way.

Or you might be missing home in the abstract, the way so many TCKs and international school kids do. There’s still a yearning. You just don’t quite know what it is you’re yearning for. Home is more of a feeling than a place when you’re a TCK.

I work with digital nomads, expats, and TCKs of all varieties. And I am one, all of the above actually. I fully understand what it’s like to have someone ask where you’re from and feel a twinge of irritation. To stumble over the answer and do a brain scan of your last few “homes” and try to decide how much time you have to answer their question. To have someone make an assumption about you based on your accent. They think they can confidently guess where you’re from – and of course they get it completely wrong – assuming you are from one specific place.

If any of this resonates, I work with people who are navigating exactly these challenges: trying to reconcile their sense of place, purpose, and belonging. Figuring out where they fit, where they want to be, where they’re going, whether this is a lifestyle they want to continue, or whether they’re ready for something different. Many people from backgrounds like ours have a deep desire to create stability and security for themselves, but don’t know how, because it’s simply not something they ever experienced before.

I specialise in helping people get in touch with themselves, their feelings, and what they’re truly searching for, because there can be so many layers of confusion wrapped up in all of this.

If you’re feeling a little lost and not sure where you’re going, I’d love to connect. I offer a free 30-minute intro call to see if working together feels like the right fit.

There’s something about the idea of just sitting quietly with your emotions that makes a lot of people squirm. Telling people I was writing a piece about sitting with uncomfortable emotions was met with a lot of ‘ewww's' and ‘yuck, I can’t do that’ from just about every person I told. The concept of being alone with our thoughts is so terrifying to so many people, it’s a driving factor for why a lot of people come to therapy in the first place. And it’s not surprising, how many times were you told to stop crying when you were little? Or not to be sad? Or not to be angry? Or to feel something you didn’t and stumble through a forced apology or a forced hug?

We have all been conditioned to disconnect from our authentic feelings and bodies and act like we’re okay even when we’re not for as long as most of us can remember. Yes, society, we have a lot of un-learning to do. We live in a world that has ill-prepared us how to manage our natural emotions. In our fast-paced world that encourages, and even celebrates, busyness, people rarely stop to sit with themselves and process all the feelings that have come up for them. Because who has time for that?

Having a long to do list has become a defence people use to avoid dealing with things (or relationships or feelings). Now, when there is a rare moment of solitude, it's a chance to reach for your phone instead. What would really benefit you instead though, would be to just sit with your body. Stop. Take a few deep breaths. And feel the feelings you’ve been avoiding. Repeatedly pushing away uncomfortable emotions can lead to a lot of stuck energy in your body. Over a long period of time this energy has to go somewhere. Until you can start to process and release your feelings, they will continue to get louder and louder until they are acknowledged. So, developing a practice of learning how to work through them is definitely better than numbing them or pushing them away.

As is the case with most things in life, dealing with it is better than not dealing with it. And when it comes to uncomfortable emotions, if you never feel them, you’ll never be able to heal them. This is where therapy can be really helpful. If you have spent a lifetime pushing your feelings away, you likely have a lot of things under the surface you can’t make sense of that need to be processed. So how does therapy work? Why should you tell a stranger all your uncomfortable feelings? Because it forces you to take time out in your busy life and start to sit with and process your feelings. Whatever it is you’ve been trying to avoid, between work and the dishes and your to-do list, that memory or memories that still creep up on you and knock the breath out of you when you least expect them to. That’s what you actually need to sit with instead of trying to push or numb away.

Therapy requires us to participate in this essential practice of introspection most of us could use a lot more of (even therapists) – sitting with our uncomfortable feelings. It’s in the moments when you finally allow yourself to feel the full spectrum of the pain and discomfort you’ve been avoiding for so long, that you can finally start to ‘heal’, or come to terms with your emotions. Pain wants to be felt. It wants recognition. It doesn’t like staying trapped inside your mind and body for years and years. It wants to come out. You just have to let it.

The idea of re-visiting old wounds can be overwhelming, even terrifying to some people – but the good news is that feelings are temporary. In the process of acknowledging them, somehow they lose some of their emotional intensity. Experiencing or re-visiting them in therapy and having them be witnessed by another is even more powerful. Through the process of navigating and accepting your feelings and experiences, the intense emotions you have around them can start to lessen. Pain wants to be felt, but it doesn’t want to stay with us forever. It is a teacher, here to teach us important lessons. Once it’s been acknowledged, we can take what we need to learn from it and then it can finally let go of its hold on us.

Pain and discomfort come in so many different shapes and sizes that sometimes we don’t even know that’s what they are. When we choose to suppress or ignore big feelings, they can take on other forms in our body and lead to a whole host of physical conditions. I am a big believer in the body-mind connection, and I’m grateful that Western medicine is finally catching up with this concept (slowly but surely).

Suppressing our emotions can have serious consequences both physically and emotionally. Developing a regular practice of emotional expression is an essential wellbeing practice. Neuroscientist and author of ‘Whole Brain Life’, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, explains in her TED Talk how feelings are fleeting and, when given the right set of circumstances, should pass through your body in about 90 seconds (if you allow them to).

While there is no right or wrong way to process emotions as they arise, a suggested formula to help your emotions naturally work their way through you instead of getting stuck is as follows:

1: Acknowledge the feeling that has come up and identify what it is. It can be helpful to name the emotion and where you feel it in your body. For example, there is a tightness in my chest and my shoulders feel tense. I feel angry.

2: Sit with whatever it is you’re feeling for a full 90-seconds. Don’t do anything else. Take deep breaths and just observe what is coming up in your body.

3: Don’t judge yourself. Imagine you are a small child and you just need to be seen and heard. Practice acceptance and compassion for yourself.

4: Move your body. Go for a walk. Jump up and down. Shake it out. Dance. Run. Help shift the stuck energy out of your system (this is why animals physically shake when they are afraid - they are passing the energy through their bodies).

5: Repeat steps 2-4 as many times as necessary!

“It’s not about feeling better. It’s about getting better at feeling.”
- Dr. Gabor Maté

Yes, there are exciting times. There’s the giddiness of it — the new coffee shops, the unfamiliar streets, the new life awaiting you in a place you don’t have a history with yet.

But there’s also a lot of stuff no one really talks about.

The tax identification number you need before you can do anything. The proof of address you need on every form — before you actually have one. The bank account you can’t open without proof of address. The forms. The storage units. The new phone number with the relevant country code. The explaining yourself, over and over, to people who are just doing their jobs but who have no idea what it took for you to get to their desk.

Did I mention the forms?

It’s a lot. It’s genuinely, unglamorously a lot. And it sits alongside the excitement in a way that can feel confusing — like you’re not allowed to complain about it because you chose this, because look at you, living the dream.

I get it. Because I’m right in the middle of it.

Last December I boarded a flight to Lisbon with a very strong premonition that I would probably want to make my visit much longer than just an exploratory trip. I’ve been on a whirlwind adventure, literally just trusting my intuition and putting one foot in front of the other since I left London last July. I’m building something new, figuring it out as I go. I can’t believe how much has happened in 10 months, it feels like multiple lifetimes. I’m honestly still working through it all.

As a British-American expat and therapeutic coach, I work with people navigating this same messy, exciting, exhausting territory. Not because I have it all figured out, but because I know what it means to build it from the ground up, and I think that matters.

One of my coaches once told me that the ideal coach is only 2–3 steps ahead of where you currently are, not so far ahead that you can’t imagine yourself where they are, but far enough ahead that their reality still feels like a stretch for you. From a neuroscience perspective, this relates to the concept of social proof: when we see someone we can relate to achieve something, it becomes easier to believe that we can achieve it too.

It’s important to have mentors, coaches, friends and people around us who help us grow and model what’s possible — but also people we genuinely relate to.

If any of this resonates, or if you feel I might be one of those people for you, I’d love to hear from you. If you’d like to book a free intro call and have a conversation, feel free to reach out!

I’m a Therapeutic Coach working with people navigating significant life transitions, particularly around relocation, career change, relationships, and overall direction. I spent a long time working solely as a therapist and separately as a coach. Over time, I found the most effective work happens when the two are integrated, which is why I now work as a Therapeutic Coach.

If you’re here, this is where to begin.

1:1 Therapeutic Coaching

I work privately with clients who want support getting clear on where they are, how they got there, and what to do next.

This is for you if you’re navigating something significant and want consistent, focused support with a clear plan on how to move forward.

Minimum 6 sessions to start.

→ Book a 30-min intro call with me to explore what working together might feel like.

Career Congregation Community

This is my course and community built around my podcast.

It’s for people who want to change direction in their career or working life, with structure and support.

You’ll get:

• A 6-week (self-paced) course

• Group coaching / networking calls

• Monthly workshops

→ Join or learn more: [Coming soon]

Podcast

I host Career Congregation, a weekly podcast exploring career paths, challenges, and real life stories around career.

→ Listen and watch here: on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

I love hearing people’s incredible career journeys, and as a therapist, I know how helpful it can be for even just one person to hear your story — you never know who you might inspire or how. If you’d like to make a podcast guest submission or if you have a collab idea, please do so here.

I look forward to connecting with you 💛.

I’m a Therapist, Coach, and the Host of Career Congregation podcast. This is where I write and discuss things that come up in my work around career, therapy, healing, relationships, personal development, wellbeing, and more.

I work with people navigating periods of change in their lives, whether that’s in their careers, relationships, where they’re living, internal shifts or something else. My work brings together psychotherapy with practical support, coaching, and holistic practices, helping you to better understand where you are now and how to take clear steps forward. I focus on empowerment and helping you reconnect with yourself and your intuition – because no one knows you better than you :)

I had an expat childhood experience as an American, growing up just outside of London and attending an international school in Surrey. This exposed me to the world and its many beautiful nationalities and cultures from a young age. I’ve been a TCK since I was 6 years old (if you know, you know). I feel deeply grateful for how this experience shaped me and the many doors it opened for me. It instilled in me a zest for life and exploration, and a thirst to experience as much of this planet as I possibly can in the short time we’re here.

Since finishing high school in the UK (now more than 20 years ago), I have lived and worked all around the world. I fully understand what it’s like to live between multiple countries, with multiple passports, navigate visa restrictions, time zones, and differing ways of life in different places. It’s not for everyone and it definitely comes with a side of emotional dysregulation and a fair share of heartbreak (you are always leaving someone, somewhere). It is through these experiences though that I now can comfortably work with clients all around the world and sit with their own discomfort. My work is primarily online – governments and regulations may make moving around challenging, but I refuse to let borders restrict the work I do with my clients.

More recently, as I set up my private practice and started working for myself, I made the difficult decision to leave my long-time home in London. Brexit has not created an environment where I want to set up my business (boo to Brexit). I moved to Ireland in July of 2025 to be back ‘in Europe’ and start taking steps towards becoming an EU citizen again. I now split my time between Ireland, occasional visits to the UK and US, and after spending a few months in Portugal earlier this year, I’ve decided to start taking steps to make it a (hopefully-one-day-soon) permanent base for me.

Building a life on my terms is my priority, and something that I realise is hard-earned. It is a privilege and I don’t take that lightly. It is also the result of many choices I’ve made throughout my adult life to step away from the societal timelines and “shoulds” that I see impact so many people. I believe we arrive when we’re ready, and comparison is the thief of joy. I’m building my life around this philosophy, surrounding myself with independent thinkers, and doing my best to lead through example.

Subscribe if you’d like to follow my journey or click the link in my bio if you’d like to work with me.

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